ANN ARBOR—The earliest known hominid fossil, which dates to about 7 million years ago, is actually some kind of ape, according to an international team of researchers led by the University of Michigan. The finding, they say, suggests scientists should rethink whether we actually descended from apes resembling chimpanzees, which are considered our closest relatives.

U-M anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and colleagues examined images and the original paper published on the discovery of the Touma